Potted house plants have long been an important part of home and commercial decorating. House plants have created a pleasing and warm environment for people in many settings, as shown by the widespread sale and distribution of all kinds of houseplants, and by the appearance of house plants in such locations as residences, restaurants, retail stores, public buildings and institutions of all kinds.
Not only have house plants imparted an indoor environment which is inherently pleasing to people, but the growing and care of house plants has provided many people with an activity which is individually important and which provides devotees with a continuing source of reward and satisfaction.
For the foregoing reasons, the sale of houseplants and related goods comprises a significant element of commercial activity.
Until now, however, a problem with houseplants has been what arrangements a plant owner must make to keep the plants watered during the owner's extended absence, as, for example, when the owner takes a vacation or is otherwise absent for too long a time period to keep house plants properly watered. Until now, a houseplant owner had to rely upon other people to water plants, and in cases where the houseplants are in a private residence, the owner may have had to give a key to the residence to another person so as to permit access to the residence for the purpose of watering the owner's houseplants.
Such an arrangement as relying on another person to water an owner's houseplants in the owner's absence has many disadvantages. For example, the temporary person may not reliably carry out agreed-upon duties; or may not secure the owner's premises properly after water the houseplants, thus exposing the owner's premises to intruders. A temporary plant watering person may simply not be available to the houseplant owner. And the houseplant owner may not wish to have any temporary person enter the owner's residential or commercial premises in the owner's absence.
All of the foregoing creates a dilemma for an owner wishing to maintain decorative houseplants with sufficient water in the owner's absence.
The present invention is a device comprising a reservoir and drip controls which comprises a system of safe and reliable house plant watering for an owner who may be absent from the house plants for an extended time period or who may simply wish to have house plants which thrive with a minimum of individual watering attention from the owner.
Prior art systems of automatic plant watering have included U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,540 to Allen for a combined plant container and watering device which requires manual operation of a water spray pump in order to supply water to a house plant which is positioned in a container pot which is in turn surrounded by an outer circumferential container comprising a water reservoir. Allen's flower pot has one or more drain holes in the bottom of the soil-holding inner plant container to permit draining of excess water. But Allen does not provide for automatic supplying of water to the house plant. The operator must manually water the plant by using the spray pump. Allen's device is thus a decorative plant container having a water reservoir, but it critically fails to automatically water the plant or even to teach automatic watering.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,529 to Freeman provides for intermittent automatic plant watering. But Freeman provides for an integral tray and double reservoir system and has two separate integral air reservoirs. Freeman depends upon water evaporation to lower the level of water in his device to the point where clearance is provided for atmospheric air to enter an upper sealed air chamber with the result that a further quantity of water is released to the plant to be watered.
The disadvantage of Freeman is that if natural evaporation does not accurately match the plant's water requirement, the plant could dry out and enter water deprivation distress. Such a condition could occur, for example, where a relatively humid environment is combined with relatively strong sunlight and a rapidly growing plant. Rapid plant growth, driven by strong sunlight, would demand a relatively large amount of water. But a humid environment would retard evaporation of water from Freeman's device, thus retarding the rate at which intermittent Freeman irrigations would occur. The result would be underwater the plant. Over-water of a plant with Freeman could also easily occur, where plant water demand is relatively low and the environment has very low humidity, causing rapid evaporation which in turn would induce undesirably high frequency Freeman irrigations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,848,029 to Han teaches another automatic intermittent plant watering system which, like Freeman, depends on natural evaporation of water to make the potted plant lighter in weight. In turn, the loss of weight from evaporated water trips a scale mechanism to actuate an irrigation valve, providing water to the plant from a reservoir until the mass of the potted plant is again large enough to tip the scale and thereby to shut off the water supply.
The problem with Han, U.S. Pat. No. 4,848,029 is similar to the problem with Freeman--natural evaporation is depended upon for intermittent plant watering. Without evaporation, and consequential weight loss, Han's device will not water the plant.
As with Freeman, Han's device will underwater a plant in a strong sunlight--high humidity situation, especially for a fast growing plant. And, similarly, both Han and Freeman will over-water a plant which grows slowly and requires little water in a very low-humidity environment.
While Han provides adjustability in the amount of weight loss which will trigger irrigation, Han fails to account for the gain in mass of a plant which occurs from the growth of the plant itself. Plants add mass not only from water and minerals added to the soil, but from carbon dioxide photosynthesized into woody plant material. Han does not account, for a gain in the plant's natural weight and thus the scale mechanism of Han is bound to be self defeating. In fact, the more weight the plant gains with Han, the less water it will get. This is a major penalty for a fast-growing house plant, leading to potentially very undesirable results with the invention of Han.
A device for attaching a water reservoir onto the pot of a house plant for wicked-siphon watering has been advertised in the Holiday 1994 retail mail-order sales catalog named IMPROVEMENTS Quick and Clever Problem Solvers. From the advertising text material, this device, called a Plant-sitter system, has a one-quart water tank that hangs on the side of a planter and a ceramic sensor cone together with a 33-inch long siphon tube which pulls water from the tank into the soil based on how dry the soil is.
Apparently the ceramic cone is porous and is able to utilize capillary action to actuate a water-filled siphon tube inserted into the one-quart water tank. Here too, as with Han and Allen, natural evaporation of water would seem to be critical to the Plant-sitter's operation. Too much evaporation would result in more copious siphoning and the plant could be over-watered. Too little evaporation would result in restricted and slow siphoning, and the plant could receive too little water.
In addition, the Plant sitter does not appear to provide for user control and is apparently not adjustable for rate of water flow, either.
What the Plant Sitter, Allen, Freeman and Han all fail to provide, and which is provided by the present invention is a constant, controllable, user-adjustable automatic system of drip-watering for house plants with which the user can experiment to find the appropriate flow rate for each and every individual house plant. With the present invention the user will be sure that the plant is watered, and the user will know, from prior experimentation and adjustment of the simple controls of the present invention, exactly how much water a given plant will receive.
The present invention is a plant watering system comprising at least one gravity flow reservoir with a removable, adjustable air-tight fill plug for water re-filling, and at least one user adjustable water outlet flow valve. The present invention allows the user to fill the reservoir and use both the air tight fill plug and the water release valve as dual controls to permit constant drip flowing or irrigation water from the reservoir into a plant saucer for conventional uptake of the water by the potted plant.